the attic stelai - The American School of Classical Studies at Athens

250 W. KENDRICK PRITCHETT
Bliimner, Technologie, I2, pp. 191 if. For prices, see, in particular, the Edict of Diocletian,
cols. XXVI-XXVIII, inclusive.
7. wivac. (VII, 59, 60-61, 62). Picture, painted board. At the end of a long
listing of wine jars and other vessels in Stele VII come three notations of the sale of
pinakes. This is a word of many meanings: it might be simply a board or plank,252
a hard piece of wood on which knives were sharpened,253 a plate from which one ate,254
or a table,255 but in the fifth century it most frequently referred to a piece of wood
(or possibly terracotta or metal) on which something was written, drawn, or painted.256
The pinax in this latter sense could be a votive plaque,257 a public notice,258 or a writing
tablet; 259 the surface might bear a picture,260 a map, or a chart.26' Since our pinakes
were household objects of some value, many of these meanings can be ruled out as
inappropriate; quite evidently the confiscated plaques were pictures which had decorated
the houses of the condemned men.
At the end of the fifth century murals were no longer the dominant form which
Greek painting took; instead, panel pictures (pinakes) became more and more
popular.262 Votive plaques had in the past borne drawings as well as inscriptions,263
but their purpose had been primarily to communicate a message to the god, not necessarily
to please the human eye. We have examples of these earlier, utilitarian paintings
in the Pente Skouphia pinakes,264 which record pictorially the processes of mining and
smelting. The small pictures hanging on the wall of the Berlin cup sculptor's shop
252
Bluimer, Technologie, II, p. 305; Ath. Mitt., VIII, 1883, p. 163.
253 Theophrastos, H.P., V, 5, 1; Hesychius, s.v. 'rtvaKag; Bliimner, Technologie, I2, p. 279.
254
Odyssey, I, 141 and XVI, 49; Pollux, X, 82; Athenaeus, IV, 128 d; Thomas Magister, 714.
255 Pollux, III, 84.
256 Occasionally the word pinax was used to denote the message itself, and not the plaque on
which it was inscribed. It later took on the special meaning of 'list' or 'index,' and in this form it
is studied by Regenbogen in R.E., s.v. Pinax. The multiple meanings of this word are made the
basis of a pun in a votive poem; see Pfeiffer, Callim., II, 96, E 54.
257 Aeschylus, Supp., 463; Aristophanes, Thesm., 778; Strabo, VIII, 6, 15; I.G., IV2, 121,
lines 24 ff.
258 Plato, Critias, 120c; Aristotle, Pol., 1341a, 36; Plutarch, Them., 5. For pinakes used for
inscriptions, see Wilhelm, Beitrdge zutr griech. Insch., Vienna, 1909, pp. 239 ff.
259
Iliad, VI, 169; Aeschylus, Supp., 946; Plato, Rep., 501a; Anth. Pal., XI, 126.
260
Plutarch, Arat., 12; Athenaeus, XII, 543 f.; Theophrastos, H.P., III, 9, 7; V, 7, 4.
261
Herodotos, V, 49; Plutarch, Thes., 1; Rom., 12; Strabo, I, 1, 11.
262
Bliimner, Technologie, IV, p. 431. Cf. M. H. Swindler, Ancient Painting, New Haven, 1929,
p. 217.
263
For example the early proto-Attic Sounion plaque of ca. 700 B.C. (B.S.A., XXXV, 1934-1935,
pl. 40 b). The subject of painted votive plaques has recently been treated by J. Boardman (B.S.A.,
XLIX, 1954, pp. 183-201), to whom the student of the history of painted plaques should be referred
for detailed bibliography.
264 Bliimner, Technologie, IV, pp. 204-205; see Davidson, Corinth, XII, p. 64; and Newhall,
A.J.A., XXXV, 1931, pp. 20-22.